It was not to be thought that France would be left tranquil on the
Adriatic. Russia did not incommode her very greatly. After Kotor
(Cattaro) had been delivered to the Muscovites by an Italian, the
Marquis Ghislieri (who had concealed until that moment his antagonism
to the French for having been removed by them from his Bologna home),
the Russians made themselves obnoxious to a small extent upon the
islands. They summoned the people of Hvar to recognize the Tzar as
their overlord, and when the people declined to do so, the Russians
bombarded them. For Dubrovnik this conflict between Russia and France
was embarrassing; she wrote to Sankovski, the Russian Commissary, that
if he exceeded his powers she would have recourse to the Tzar, "her
beloved protector." But when in the summer of that year, 1806, she was
besieged for twenty days, the French were in occupation of the town,
while the Russians with their Montenegrin friends were trying to
dislodge them. It is said that before the garrison was relieved, by
the arrival of another French force, there had been so much damage
done to the Republic's ancient walls and palaces and other buildings
that the loss, to mention only the pecuniary loss, amounted to
eighteen million francs. After the Treaty of Tilsit in 1807 the
British undertook, and more effectively, those operations in the
Adriatic which the Russians now abandoned. They tried to burn at
Triest the Russian vessels which had been ceded to France, and for a
few years they had command of the Adriatic, keeping sometimes as many
as twenty-two ships in those waters, while the French are said to have
had at no time more than seven frigates.
The old Republic was dissolved; but many other questions weighed upon
Napoleon. It was the Austrian Emperor and not he whom many people in
Dalmatia held to be their lawful monarch, for the Habsburg was the
heir of the Croatian Kings. And so while England had the sea in her
possession, Austria had the salt-lands of the isle of Pago, and the
populace on the Quarnero Islands took the rudders off the boats which
were to carry food to Zadar. The Austrians advanced on Split, with
ordinary troops and volunteers. At Hvar the people kept Napoleon's
birthday with apparent enthusiasm; on the next day they revolted and
hoisted the Austrian flag. Then the peasants seized the town and for
three days indulged in pillage, burning amongst other things the
valuable libraries of those who favoured France.